Turning Fans and Followers Into Clients
Anyone who is in business knows that it isn’t always easy to convert social media fans and followers into actual clients. Sometimes, it is a lot less difficult to acquire fans and followers than to turn them into clients.
The degree of difficulty
It seems as though the degree of difficulty is not the same with every industry or niche. Depending on which products and/or services you are selling will determine how difficult it is to convert your people into paying customers. If you are offering a product or service that people feel they need (it is a necessity, not a luxury), you will have an easier time of converting them and of selling more. If, on the other hand, your offerings are deemed less of a necessity by the people doing the buying, you will have a more difficult time of selling. In each case, you should develop (or have developed for you) a strong and effective web presence. You need to give your fans and followers a chance to get to know them and for them to get to know you. Only after you have successfully built a relationship together with a solid foundation will you be successful at turning them into clients.
There are many people who have developed relationships and have gained customers solely through their online connections. It is critical that you share valuable content, have meaningful online connections, are sincere in your efforts to help other people. Once they see that your goal is to help them and not to help yourself, the relationship will flourish because they will begin to trust you and to have confidence in your credibility. People (in general) love to be offered content that allows them to learn new information on a regular basis. The more value that you are able to give other people, the more they will appreciate who you are and what you have to offer. As some point in the relationship, your fans and followers will pursue a conversation with you that involves buying something from you.
Compel them to return to you over and over again
If you can get people to keep coming back to you, they will eventually become loyal customers. Loyal fans and followers = loyal customers. You should bear in mind that it will most likely take people more than one or two interactions before they decide to buy something from you. It will probably take them seven, eight, or even more interactions. You need to be patient and allow them to do it in their own time. The most effective way to make them feel comfortable is to continue to draw them into your discussions and make them feel that they are an important part of the conversation. You need to make them feel that their opinions matter to you. It has been proven,over and over again, that many positive things come out of social networking and online social interactions. It is very important that you use the right tools effectively. If you do, you will experience a great deal of success for your business.
Persistence and consistency
One of the two most important ingredients when it comes to converting fans and followers into clients are persistence and consistency. You need to interact often, make sure that you post content a consistent number of times (and on specific days), and continue to communicate with other people as often as they communicate with you. It is extremely important to make sure that your fans and followers understand how much value you hold and how important your contributions are to them professionally. Once you have established relationships with people with whom your connection started online, there will be a time when you should get to know them face to face. Both types of interactions are extremely important and both are necessary for a successful relationship overall.
The quality of your content
I am sure that you have heard the expression “Content Is King.” That is absolutely correct. Without your content, you have nothing. Because of the fact that the success of social media is based on successful relationships, your content must really be of the highest quality possible. You are relating to people through your content and what you write will make them decide whether they want to continue to build a relationship with you. It has to be as perfect as possible.
Conclusion
Turning fans and followers into loyal clients seems like a daunting task as a whole. However, when you approach it methodically and deal with one step at a time, you can succeed at building relationships with people, getting them to trust you and to believe in your credibility and trustworthiness, and to truly want to do business with you and to be loyal clients for many years to come. If you put the right list of ingredients together in order to become truly successful, you will see that your efforts will pay off and will keep paying off. Make sure that whatever you offer to other people, they are benefitting in some way. You want to try to make sure that when they need what you are offering, you are the first one to come to mind.
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Via LinkedIn Groups
Group: Social Media Advisors
Discussion: Turning Fans and Followers Into Clients
Yep, I agree. we are launching a new Golf range facility here in Australia and are doing the website at the moment and trying to capture as much info for our database and use social media more to direct. What are some ideas to get fans once captured to participate at facility?
Posted by Peter
Via LinkedIn Groups
Group: Writers World
Discussion: Turning Fans and Followers Into Clients
Interesting article. I'm planning to spend a great deal more time mining social media for freelance work and readers for my fiction ebooks in 2012.
Candy
Posted by Candy
Peter,
Check out our other articles on this topic:
https://www.compukol.com/blog/engaging-your-facebook-fans/
https://www.compukol.com/blog/how-to-engage-your-facebook-audience/
https://www.compukol.com/blog/using-social-media-to-engage-people/
https://www.compukol.com/blog/forging-stronger-business-to-business-links-with-linkedins-company-pages/
https://www.compukol.com/blog/how-to-engage-influential-people/
I hope this will help you.
Michael
Having followers turned to loyal customers has been a nightmare experience for most online businesses and bloggers for years. This insightful write up is a by-product of experience and in depth research. Kudos guys!
Via LinkedIn Groups
Group: NY Entrepreneurs Business Network (NYEBN)
Discussion: Turning Fans and Followers Into Clients
Excellent article.. I been coming across a lot of articles about how to actually make use of these social networking sites, and they are very helpful. And because of that, I just started using LinkedIn- the right way 😉
Posted by Nora
Via LinkedIn Groups
Group: Business Writers of America
Discussion: Turning Fans and Followers Into Clients
I would agree. That has been one of our biggest challenges. We believe that perseverance is the key!
Posted by Mary Lou